GRGR(32) - Digital Pornography

[David Morris]

An earlier post:

>From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com> To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
>Subject: GRGR(26) - Paranoia=Analysis? Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 09:24:13 
>-0500
>
>----------
>(567.9)  Like signals sent out for travelers, shape keep repeating for him, 
>Zonal shapes he will allow to enter but won't interpret, not anymore.  The 
>most persistent of these [...] are the stairstep gables [...] like 
>monuments to Analysis. [...] [delta]x and [delta]y [...] film and calculus, 
>both pornographies of flight.
>----------
>Pornography akin to that by Eadweard Muybridge?
>http://masters-of-photography.com/M/muybridge/muybridge_ascending_stairs_full.html

Today I went the "Animation Theater" at the last day of the SIGGRAPH 2000 
Convention here in New Orleans.  It is a BIG convention devoted to computer 
imagery of all kinds.  Digital animation and virtual 3D imagery are the 
driving force there.

Numerous booths at the trade exhibit featured full-body-scans.  Step right 
up and have get digitized in 3D.  Grids of light are projected and recorded 
across the standing figure.  Like magic the subject appears on the screen in 
"3D."  Talk about realistic portraits!  These you can examine from any angle 
or perspective.  And the really good ones are done in the nude and with a 
fully shaved body (including head).  That's because the scanners have a hard 
time with the complexity of the surface of hair.

Another big feature at these booths was mapping the movements of the human 
figure onto digitized figures.  Virtual 3D cartoon characters are 
"constructed" with internal armatures and joints which can be moved like a 
puppet.  Points on these figures are then mapped onto real people who are 
wired with broadcast-recording "points" glued to their bodies which make the 
digital character move in synch.  You could watch the wired humans act and 
dance on stage and simultaneously follow the performance of a digital 
character move just so realistically in his wild virtual world.

One of the short films I saw at the Animation Theater was titled "Digital 
Muybridge, The Japanese Figures."  Naked and very realistic looking Japanese 
men and women were presented in their entirety.  Then they started to 
perform various dances and movements.  Their faces were unmoving, but 
pretty.  In all they had scanned about ten men and ten women of all shapes 
and sizes.  These figures pranced about with no shame.  It then became clear 
that these figures would do anything you asked, anything....

It turns out that Muybridge is a hero to the digital pornographers.  Now I 
understand the above GR quote a little better.  Pynchon truly is prophetic.

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